I look over my shoulder and observe Emily slowly trailing behind us. She hasn't told us anything about this Dungeon other than that it was a tier one and that we should be fine provided we were cautious in our approach. I glance to the left of me and see Alexa looking about the cavern restlessly.

The tunnels weren't as dark in this Dungeon like I thought they'd be. The walls are coated in a moss that gave off a soft glow, lighting the passage. Emily explained about ten minutes ago that it was a special type of moss called lumphyta that grew in damp, mana dense locations. The moss fed on the mana in the air and let off a glow while processing it. The further in we go, the more intense that glow will become as the mana becomes increasingly dense. Regardless of this, though, Emily had brought torches and each of us carried a lit one. The moss glow wasn't too bright and missing details of the cave was a sure fire way to get in trouble.

In a normal Dungeon prowl, the group would carry torches or a Mage would have a [Lumen] floating about lighting up the passageways, while a Rogue would scout ahead of the group in the darkness searching for monsters and traps. All Rogues either strengthened their eyesight or learned enhancement spells to give themselves better vision in the dark.

There was no point in scouting if you brought a light source that screamed out, 'HEY ENEMY OVER HERE KILL ME!'

Because Alexa didn't have enough practice to be able to control two different instances of mana at the same time, we decided to go with torches instead of a mana light.

Looking back forward I send out my mana to scan the surroundings but get nothing in return for it except a headache from Emily smacking me for using mana. I can usually keep scan up while I walk if I focus, extending it as far as seven feet away in any one direction at a time. Similar to Alexa though, I can't do anything else with my mana besides that and trying to do anything except walking slowly forward while scanning will cause it to break apart.

"We've been walking for ten minutes mom, where is all the adventure? Where are the monsters?"

It's not that I'm taking this lightly, but I've been super excited the past week since the plans to come here were made. It will be my first time seeing a monster! And the mana system for killing them makes it sound like leveling up! This is supposed to be so damn FUN I can't help but be disappointed.

"Pay attention and don't talk too loud. If you draw too many of them to you at once even you two will have trouble. This isn't an adventure, Damien. This is serious, you could die," Emily responds.

"Fine, fine."

She's so morbid. I am treating this too lightly though, and I know it. She's just trying to instill a sense of urgency in me. She means well.

Another minute goes by and I look over at Alexa to see her still relentlessly scanning the passageways. I lean over and jab her in the side and she shrieks, jumping about two feet into the air away from me, causing me to cover my mouth with my hands and bend forward doing my damndest not to howl with laughter as she turns a shade of red I can see even in the poor light.

"Shut up," she whisper-yells at me, walking over holding up her fist.

"Ok, ok I'm sorry, jeez. I think you should loosen up though. You're obviously way too stressed," I respond, backing away slowly as Emily once again raps me on the head for messing around, albeit it felt a lot lighter than usual.

Understanding how she covered that distance between us so fast just to smack me and retreat back immediately still escapes me, but it helps me feel safe.

"How are you not! We're in a Dungeon yet you're treating it like an afternoon stroll," Alexa responds in a whisper, throwing her hands up in exasperation.

"Yeah, it is a Dungeon, but mom said we'd be fine in if we were careful. You know how protective she is," I say while pointing my thumb back in Emily's direction. "Do you really think she'd let us in here if she didn't think we were fully capable of handling ourselves? Loosen up a little Lexi, the cramped look on your face is gonna give you wrinkles by next year."

Her gaze turns from exasperation to a glare as she turns back forward only to once again let out a small shriek, instantly covering her mouth and pointing.

Looking over where she is pointing, I can vaguely make out a figure in the dim light. Standing about forty to fifty feet away, what looks like a furry bi-pedal creature that stands at our height is inching towards us. It has a face that seems to be a mix between a fox and dog and carries a crude club made out of some of the larger rocks of this cave and wood. The creature isn't moving toward us very fast, just carefully advancing while staring at us. The closer it gets the more its features begin to stand out and I realize it looks like a young-

"Gnoll, the inhabitants of this Dungeon. It looks like your yelling attracted a lot of them for your first encounter, good luck."

Emily confirms my thoughts and causes both Alexa and I to jump and whirl around, forgetting she was there in the tension. As calm as I pride myself in being, seeing a monster for the first time is still nerve-wracking.

When we process her words, we turn back around to see eight more had been behind the first one, hiding in the shadows.

"They're... cute," Alexa says after a few moments, looking at them.

"What your enemy looks like doesn't matter. If it comes to kill you, you kill it first. Eat or be eaten, that is the law of the land, don't forget it," Emily rebukes.

"I... I don't wanna kill that though. It's so small and furry. It looks like Jasper," Alexa whispers taking a half step back as the monster gets closer to her.

I back away silently from Alexa and creep to the right while keeping my footfalls as light as possible. The first Gnoll is about fifteen feet away from her at this point and the others are about twenty feet behind him, watching.

Without warning, the Gnoll let out a sound comparable to a mix between a low roar and a growl, its lips curling upward revealing long sharp teeth glistening with drool and its one-inch claws extending from its hands, digging into the wooden handle of its club. Leaping towards Alexa, it lifts the club above its head, ready to smash it down on the defenseless girl.

The battle-cry causes her to stumble and fall backward onto her rear, looking at the furry creature that had become teeth and claws in but a moment. Still stalking around it, I see her staring at it stunned as the beast closes in on her sitting form.

Alexa fell backward and froze while she watched the Gnoll leap at her. No magic had passed over her to cause her state and it wasn't particularly loud, it had just surprised her so much she'd tried to take another step back and stumbled. The Gnoll had changed in a moment, turning from a cute, docile little thing into a monster, brandishing its long teeth and claws. The abrupt difference had been so unexpected her brain couldn't think of anything to do except continue to sit on the ground, scared.

She watched as the creature sprinted toward her, raising its weapon to throw at her or smash down on her.

'Move, move move move,' she demanded from herself, but her legs wouldn't do it.

The creature got within ten feet and leaned forward to let his club fly, hand moments from releasing it when Damien slammed a punch into its side like a cannon.

The Gnoll, regardless of it being the same size as him, buckled around the boy's hand with a dull sound before being launched away as Damien's sprinting momentum transferred through his fist into it. The club released from its grip and sailed wide of where she'd been sitting, tumbling along the ground behind her.

Still staring at the Gnoll, Alexa followed its path as it soared through the air ten feet and crashed into the wall of the Dungeon room they were in. On contact, the monster bounced off with a dull crunching sound and landed in a heap, unmoving.

"Is that it? It felt like barely a drip. I could condense more mana in ten seconds back when I was trying out Rumina."

Alexa looked back in front of herself again and saw Damien mumbling to himself, but she couldn't understand what he was saying at all. He'd just killed the creature without a second thought.

'What in the world is he doing? How is he so calm? Why... why is he ok with this?'

Similar questions continued to rummage through her head while she glanced back to the Gnoll on the ground only to quickly look back to Damien again as blue blood had begun leaking out of its mouth, signifying it was a creature modified by mana.

While more questions and fear circled through her mind, she watched Damien turn toward the other eight monsters and leaped towards them, seemingly without thought to a plan.

Alexa wanted to scream out to him to stop, but it was too late. He plowed into the circle of Gnolls with the speed of a college level sprinter, emerging out the other side of their cluster with one of them stuck on his lowered shoulder.

He skidded to a halt and the hitchhiker dropped forward off of him, landing on the ground on its back. Before it could stand up again, Damien's hand shot forward and grabbed its left ankle, bracing himself before whipping the fallen Gnoll around and slamming it into the three closest monsters that he'd heard chasing after him and their comrade. Before those four were even touching the ground to his left, Alexa watched him dash to his right to avoid being surrounded by the other four that were in a line rushing his location.

Damien had never been one to seek out fights in his old life but if one had ever found him due to his stubborn attitude, he didn't back down either. The man was no professional fighter and lost as often as he won, but he at least knew the basics of group fighting from video games and real-life situations: Don't get surrounded, stay on the move, keep your enemies off balance, and don't ever give your opponents mercy until they were all incapacitated in some way. He was a scrapper and these little monsters didn't seem to have any teamwork or experience fighting anything, so the multitude of fight plans he'd gone over and over in his head every day had been put to use.

Once he'd dashed to his right Damien looked up to assess his opponents. None of them seemed to have weapons other than their claws and teeth and were all about the same size as him or slightly bigger, but were hunched forward slightly. They were clumsy and took a moment to stop their charge, two even falling forward to the ground onto each other, before looking around to find him. Damien lunged forward and swung his right fist into the skull of the closet Gnoll as it tried to get up from its hands and knees, impacting its temple with enough force to sound a loud crack through the cavern and drill its face back into the ground, body crumpling downward as well. The Gnoll did not get up.

A searing pain lanced through his arm as the Gnoll that had crashed into the first he took down had already leapt in his direction from the ground, biting down hard on the arm that had killed its friend. Damien stifled a yell while grabbing the Gnoll by its neck with his left hand, squeezing hard enough to crush its windpipe and causing its jaws to go limp. It fell as the last two Gnolls barreled into him, knocking him to the ground.

He grimaced at the mistake he made of putting too much momentum into that first punch and it was costing him.

The two Gnolls immediately began biting at him and clawing up his arms, getting many superficial scrapes and cuts along them and a few deeper ones. The one on his right latched onto his right shoulder with its teeth as it pushed into his chest with its hands to attempt to rip out a chunk of his flesh.

Damien lifted the middle knuckle on his left hand just above the others and jabbed it into that Gnolls neck as hard as he could, causing it to let go and howl in pain as it clutched at its neck. After freeing up his right arm for movement and moving his left arm back to his left side, he grabbed at the Gnoll that was slashing his arms and waist, catching its downward right-handed swipe. With his right hand locking its wrist, he brought his left arm through its elbow-joint above the Gnolls wrist and collapsing it inward. The monster screamed in pain and fell forward, meeting a painful end as his right hand met the creature's throat. The strike destroyed its windpipe, causing it to reel back and suffocate while the other Gnoll latched back onto his shoulder.

Damien tried to get the beast off him but was having no luck, too busy fending off the swipes directed at his face to really change anything. Thinking quickly, he pushed his body off the ground, pivoting his head to dodge a swipe aimed at his face, and stood. The abrupt movement startled the Gnoll but it didn't let go and lifted its feet up, attempting to claw at his lower body with them as well. The added weight hung on his shoulder even more and almost brought him back to the ground. With a stumble, he regained his footing and dragged his parasite along with him towards the wall he'd punched the first Gnoll into, jumping forward and smashing his shoulder parasite into it. The monster's mouth instantly loosened as it fell to the ground, trying to breathe while on its four limbs.

Damien reached down to snuff its life, grabbing it by the skull and slamming it into the ground once, his red blood dripping to the ground and mixing with the pool of blue beginning to form, sizzling each time it dropped in as the mana in it rejected each other.

This entire exchange had taken about twenty seconds. He let his arms fall slowly to his sides while he rolled his neck and did his best to ignore the throbbing pain in his shoulder.

A sound of metal clanging nearby caught his attention and he looked down to see his small shiv lying on the ground by his feet. Damien stared at it for a moment before looking up and seeing the sound had caught the attention of the other four Gnolls who were cautiously approaching his location. He looked back down and sighed, berating himself for being so caught up in the moment that he'd forgotten he had weapons.

He pulled the small sword off his back and held it in his right hand, twirling it around as if it were a baseball bat. It was light; perhaps because of his increased strength, or because of its reduced length. Either way, it would do well as a club. He had minimal practice with swords, his mom only teaching him basics like how to swing it right and a proper stance, but he figured he could use it like a bat and get similar results, at least against these instinct driven monsters. He'd just have to remember to make sure he wasn't swinging with the flat of the blade.

The Gnolls were getting close now and surrounding him, two in front and one on each side. He kept his back to the wall and withdrew his dagger with his left hand. With a quick motion, he threw the dagger as hard as he could at the Gnoll in the middle right spot, then lunged with his sword pointed at the furthest right Gnoll's chest.

Right while he was lunging, a pillar of fire parallel to the ground encased the two leftmost Gnoll's completely, throwing them into the cave wall on his left.

Alexa watched, covering her mouth and letting out a gasp as the Gnoll bit into the boy's arm.

Her boy. Damien. She wanted to help him, to do anything, but was too scared by how savagely the five of them fought to live and couldn't bring her shaky legs to move. She was trembling from head to toe and could already smell the blood in the air from the first Gnoll he'd killed no matter how much she refused to look at it.

"Well, are you going to help him?" Emily asked.

Alexa didn't respond, only bearing witness as Damien crushed the Gnolls throat and the other two dashed toward him. She wanted to help him. She wanted nothing more than to stop being a coward, but she couldn't force herself to move. She'd been pampered all her life; she wasn't prepared for... for this! She'd never been in a fight. She'd never even hit someone except Damien. This was terrifying. The look on their faces, their eyes. The way they glowed red. The blood. The death.

'I don't want to be here.'

"Though, I don't think he needs you," Emily prodded.

That sentence only served to make her trepidation worse. He didn't need her. He wouldn't need her. He could get through this on his own; she didn't need to fight. She didn't need to kill.

She stayed frozen as the two Gnolls tackled him to the ground and he struggled to keep them away from his face.

"Are you comfortable being the protected, weak damsel? You may be leaps and bounds ahead of him now, but he'll leave you behind at this rate, you know?"

Like fire washing over her body that had been encased in ice, the words poured over her. The thought of watching his back as he disappeared from her life hurt. He was her first real friend. The first person she'd chosen to give a damn about besides her family. The thought of losing him was not a pleasant one in the slightest. Thinking on it further, he was her junior. Letting him get ahead of her was unthinkable. Allowing him to protect her like he was right now...

Alexa's spirit flared and movement finally broke the icy tomb she'd been in since the fight began as she stood up. She might not be able to fight hand to hand like that with them, let alone step forward, but she could do something else.

Setting into a fighting stance with her left foot in front, she moved her arms from her right side forward, dragging mana along with them and into her control as she gave it purpose, turning it into fire. Weaving the fire in front of her body like a snake as she willed it to grow, she stepped forward with her right foot and turned inward on it, counterclockwise. She dragged the mana around her body away from the fight then swiveled her left foot back and toward the fight, turning another 180 degrees for a full rotation. Her arms followed the flow of her body and her mana followed her arms as she threw it with all she had in one fluid motion across the forty-foot gap between her and him, directing it at the two Gnolls to his left that had been unlucky enough to be her target.

"Heal him please so we can continue, though I'm hesitant too after that display," Emily said as she directed Alexa to her son's wounds.

Once the two had fought together and her idiot son had pulled out his weapons, the last four Gnoll's fell relatively quickly.

"We are going to keep going? Damien is cut all over! I think we should head back, I don't want to go deeper int-"

"He won't be cut all over once you heal him, will he? Stop acting like a child. You are nine. You need to start being more confident in places outside the house, young lady. We can't coddle you forever," Emily said, interrupting her daughter's whining and trying again to direct her towards her son once again.

The girl was skittish around unknowns and brutish when in a familiar environment, an ironic composition of a personality. She loved the girl almost as much as she loved Damien, thinking of her as family within months of her moving in with them. Damien had treated her like family the moment she'd stepped into the house, electing to sleep together with her to make her transition more comfortable. How could the mom of the home let her boy down and give anything less than her whole heart into raising the girl?

"I'm fine either way, but I'd like to sit down for a moment. That was pretty intense. I can't believe you roasted those two like that. If I could do that, I wouldn't have had a problem at all with fighting the beasts," Her son commented slowly falling to the ground with his back against the wall.

"You wouldn't be so hurt, or so exhausted, if you had taken a moment to think before you acted. The first punch was good, but I told you not to use any mana. It may not appear that you use any, but I can tell when the ambient mana is disturbed, and if I can tell so can others. It was smart that you moved stealthily and used Alexa as bait, taking the Gnoll leader by surprise. But diving into a pack of eight with your bare fists? Who in their right mind fights a creature that uses its teeth and claws with their bare hands? Are you dumb? You even had weapons. I mean sure as a last resort if you have nothing on hand you do whatever you can to live, but you have weapons! Not that you used them right, electing to give them to your enemy instead of using them yourself. What purpose did that serve, pray tell? If it weren't for the Rumina training you'd done and the fact that you are oddly good at hand to hand combat, they'd have piled on you and tore you to shreds. The Gnoll's in this cave are about as strong as your average seven-year-old, you wouldn't have lasted a minute. Please don't ever do that again."

The long berating done with, Emily took a deep breath. It had been hell on her nerves not to stop the fight when he'd been tackled. The cuts weren't intense at all and he was doing an excellent job of covering himself, but if it had looked like for one moment a strike would land somewhere dangerous she would have ripped him right out of there.

Her legs were already a little sore from how intensely she'd been tightening them, waiting for the signal to destroy the little group of cretins that touched her baby.

Looking rather downtrodden, her son glanced away and stuttered out, "W-well you know I'm not used to having a sword! My first response wasn't to use it I just... I don't know. I used what I knew, and condensing air on my fist seemed easy enough to mask. And the dagger was a good distraction! I was hoping it would stick in its head if i got lucky! I didn't expect it to bounce off the thing's chest for it to pick up! I won't do that again so please don't tell anyone about this. Vanessa would never let me hear the end of it and dad wouldn't let me come back here without proper swordsman training."

Finishing his spiel, her son was already looking up at her with baby eyes.

Shaking her head, Emily responded, "Perhaps that would be for the best after seeing how you fight. For now though, finish resting and let's get moving. Do not overly showcase your strength anymore either. That is as big a telltale of your having mana as actually using it is. I don't know why I had to tell you that of all people. You're usually so intelligent and thoughtful. It's like this whole trip has made you lose your most redeeming feature. Twenty minutes in and you nearly get yourself killed. I was right to come along, you're so..." Trailing off, she muttered to herself while turning away.

It had scared her when he dove into their ranks before drawing his weapons but seeing him wreak havoc on them was... amazing. She had been so proud to see the way he moved and thought it took all she had to stop herself from praising him instead of berating him for his mistakes. If she praised him here, he might fight like that again in the future. Against weak opponents it was ok, but against something strong it could get him seriously injured. Or worse.

"Mom, I have a question," Damien looked up at her and said, interrupting her thoughts.

She nodded at him.

"Why did I get so little mana from these creatures?"

She responded with a question of her own, "How much did you get?"

"About a minutes worth of rumination," he said.

Nodding, she replied, "That sounds about right for this Dungeon and your strength. The stronger the mana source, the more you'll get from the Dungeon monsters. This one is tier one, it makes sense you would hardly get anything from it, especially since you have already condensed mana into your bones. Our beautiful Alexa, on the other hand, probably got more in the way of improvement than you did due to the fact that she's never ruminated. It's yet another way Celestials benefit more than the other races from their constitution."

Taking a moment to see that he was following along, she continued, "However, like I said, this is a tier one Dungeon. She would have only gained maybe ten minutes or so from her two kills as well."

Damien nodded as Alexa finished up healing him. She stood up and brushed the dust off her clothes. Damien looked at his patched-up skin under his torn clothing, then turned toward her with another question in his eyes.

"Go ahead."

"Why didn't you give us some light armor to protect us from them?"

'A good question,' she thought.

"I would have if you'd have asked for it. But you didn't so I didn't. Trial by fire, my star. Learn from your mistakes the hard way so you'll never make them again. Pain is the best teacher, after all. You'll learn the importance of preparing things more from this than if I were to gather everything perfectly for you."

He stared at her, seeming to understand, but still gave her a look that said foul play. He stood up and dusted himself off as well, then grabbed Alexa's hand as he walked further into the Dungeon's depth.

"What are you doing?" the girl asked.

"Keeping you near me so I don't have to fight alone again. Those claws hurt and since I can't use my strength I'll need you," He responded. "Plus, if you can wipe out the next group completely like you did those two your body will get stronger too. That way you can protect yourself and me better."

The girl looked at him angrily for a moment but then smiled slowly and turned away letting him pull her forward. Emily watched her smile from the shadows as it became smaller and smaller before vanishing entirely as her shoulders sagged downward.

"I'm sorry," she said weakly.

"I know," he responded quietly, turning towards her and stopping to give the trembling girl a long hug.

Small sniffling sounds came from the two as Emily looked on from the side, biting her fingernails and dying to join in on the moment

A few minutes passed and Alexa whispered quietly, "Why weren't you scared?"

"I was," he responded, backing away and grabbing her hand as he slowly pulled her alongside him to go forward again. "That's why I killed them before they got to the people I was scared for."

"That's not what I meant, and you don't have to protect me."

"Well from what I saw- I'm kidding, I'm kidding," he laughed as Alexa stopped walking and began glaring at him. "I know. Scary things are just scary, I just... fighting comes natural to me, I guess. I saw them and thought, 'well... them or me' and instead of running away I ran forward. You can't run away when you have things you need to keep safe."

"You don't need to protect me, Damien." She declared angrily.

"I know, I know. I meant in the future. What if you were hurt? Or I had a little sister?" He looked over Alexa's shoulder and scanned the cave with a smile on his face for a moment before turning back to her, "Better I learn to fight now than have to later and not know how, you know?"

The two continued whispering back and forth as they proceeded further into the Dungeon while Emily walked behind them and listened.

As they were rounding the corner out of the room, her son's eyes lingered back into the passageway to flit over the aftermath of the battle one last time.

She woke up to the sound of intruders in her home and she could feel as each of her children winked out of existence. It had been hours, yet there was no sign they would leave.

Lifting her head up from where she lay on the floor, she sniffed at the air and detected the faint smell of blood, that of her kin... and something else. She'd ruled over this place for a couple of years now as the alpha but never had someone so thoroughly and systematically massacred her family, exploring all the branches from caves before going deeper. She'd tried to leave before today to deal with other aggressive intruders like these, but the draw of the stone was too irresistible to refuse, beckoning her back each and every time.

She stood up and moved away from the stone towards the exit to the cavern but stopped as she got near. The stone was calling to her, begging her to come back, telling her to turn her head and look at it, but she didn't. She knew if she did she wouldn't be able to leave, just like the times before. She'd be drawn back to it again, no matter what she wanted.

She'd return here soon, she just had to deal with the monsters that were killing her pack instead of just dying as good cattle should have. Once she killed them she'd come back. Definitely.

With that last reassurance, the Alpha lept from the room and down the halls, feeling freer than ever before. She'd long forgotten this feeling from before she found the stone. Its influence left her mind and she realized... she never wanted to go back.

The Alpha sprinted through the maze that was her home towards where she sensed the intruders, taking every little shortcut she knew of. Being far from the stone seemed to weaken the sense that was telling her where they were, but that didn't matter. She could hear them now.

When she got closer to where the monsters were hunting her kin, she slowed to a crawl. She'd felt how they hunted and knew they'd take a break soon. When they did, she'd strike.

Waiting paid off soon enough. The intruders had stopped and were sitting, unprepared and unsuspecting. She stalked in the shadows from the entrance behind them, the one they'd not noticed as they walked into this spacious cavern. She slid across the floor not making a noise, keeping her claws retracted and stepping on the soft glowing spots on the floor. The soft spots were the quietest.

Finally, she'd sidled up behind the creatures that had invaded her home, slowing to a stop behind the one without the two big growths on its back while they continued their inane chatter. Something had been off about the way the air felt near them, but it had made no difference in her tactic. This one had been more ruthless and cunning, so she would take it out first before finishing off the other.

She stood on her hind legs and slid her claws out slowly from her hands. They extended to a length of four inches, twice as long as any of her kin and twice as deadly. She would end this fast.

She repressed a low growl of satisfaction, knowing they would die within the minute as she raised her right arm in the air. She was the alpha. This cave was hers. And these two would never see daylight again.